Wake Up
by Noe Izumi
Summary: One day, Rose wakes up back to her normal life, as if she had never known the Doctor... But she still remembers him. It was all a dream? What the hell is happening?
1. Prologue

That the Doctor was afraid, it was not a good sign.

That was something that Rose had had in mind since she met him, and if she has learned something during all that time it was that, when the doctor was afraid, it was because things were going really wrong.

She and the Doctor were leaning on the TARDIS' railing, laughing loudly as they remembered their last adventure, both with that special shining in the eyes that only those who have come to empathize perfectly have. When the doctor started for the umpteenth time his imitation of the royal counselor in the verge of a nervous breakdown, the lights went out suddenly, and when they came back, a tremendous shaking of the TARDIS threw them down.

After a very short moment of confusion, the Doctor let out a snort of laughter and the two burst into laughter again at the unexpected reaction of the TARDIS.

It was right then when things started to turn out really bad.

The Doctor stood up, still gasping for breath between his giggling, and he headed for the panels to see what had caused that unwelcome shaking, which, anyway, was quite normal. Rose had been sitting on the floor, with a huge smile still etched on her face. She only could see the Doctor backwards, but she saw that he remained motionless, his hands firmly gripping the bars and gears of the ship.

"Doctor?"

She got up and went towards him, staggering a little after another little shake of the TARDIS.

"Anything's wrong? Doctor?"

The Doctor was staring at one of the panels, looking at it with wide eyes. The smile had vanished from his face.

"What happens?" she asked again, feeling an unpleasant sensation making its way into her stomach.

The Doctor did not seem to listen to her. He shook his head slowly, like if it were difficult for him to do a single move, staring at the lights.

"No ... please ... please, not that…"

Rose felt her heart skipped a beat, because if there was something that was clear was that things were going terribly wrong if the Doctor was scared. She tried not to fall with the rattle of the TARDIS while he began to work the controls, moving back and forth frantically, as if their lives depended on being able to escape in time to wherever they meet, away from whatever it I was watching ...

"Not the best place to land in. Oh no, of course not ... On the contrary, the world's worst place to land in ... I should've expected this ... Damn, I should've expected this!

"Doctor? What's happening?" she grabbed him firmly by the arm, fighting the worry that had begun to dominate her "Please, tell me what's happening"

He looked at her, but he quickly looked away again, as if he could not explain it, or he did not want to do it ... At that very moment, another huge shake separated them. Sparks and explosions were all around them, and Rose protected herself with her arms. The two friends managed to cling to the railing, but the expression of the Doctor made it clear that something very bad was about to happen. Suddenly, a strange, toneless buzzing, growing gradually in intensity, muffled the unsuccessful attempts of the TARDIS to take off. The already terrified expression in the Doctor's face turned into real horror as he watched, unable to do anything

"No, no, NO!!... Time's left!!"

He abruptly turned to Rose and grabbed her by the shoulders, his hazel-brown eyes locked on hers, pleading, powerful, slightly darker than her own.

"Listen to me, Rose ... Whatever happens, don't forget about me" he said frantically, gasping for breath, trying to be heard above the toneless hum and the swooshing noise of the TARDIS. "Not even for a single second. Whatever happens to you, don't forget me, your life depends on it, Rose, do you understand?"

Even before a shocked Rose could answer, a terrible shake threw them down to the floor. She screamed. The strange buzzing filled her ears completely; it entered in her head, it possessed her whole body. She felt the Doctor's hand holding hers, and she was overcome by the feeling that everything would be fine, no matter what would happen…

Then everything exploded in a blinding light ... and the darkness swallowed her.


	2. 1

**-1-**

An intermittent, regular beeping made its way in the dense darkness where she was sunken, penetrating in the silence until it break apart. Without realizing what she was doing, she stretched a hand which seemed to weigh a ton towards the place the sound was coming from; her clumsy fingers touched something cold and hard. The sound disappeared.

Rose Tyler opened her eyes, slowly. Bright, undefined numbers were floating in front of her. It was her alarm clock.

He woke up, startled, looking around; her heart hammering painfully in her chest.

The walls, bubble-gum pink walls, slightly covered with photos and postcards. The pink curtains. The pink duvet cover. His plushy dog, the one she had got since she was a child; it had fallen from her bed, over the clothing pieces scattered in the violet fitted carpet of the floor.

She was in her room.

Everything came into her head, quickly, striking her like a lightning. She was in the TARDIS with the Doctor, they were laughing together, and suddenly everything began to shake… He had taken her hand tightly, and that blinding light had covered the whole world…

She rubbed her eyes; they burn slightly. Then she smiled, suddenly moved: for sure everything had turn out fine, but she fainted for some reason and the Doctor had brought her there. She had missed the action parts, but at least she was safe.

She get out of the room, without consider a little touching up in front of the mirror (sure she was looking awful); everything in its own time. It was not going to be the first time the Doctor was going to see her just gone out of bed, in a teddy bears pajamas and the chaos instead of hair.

Her mother was sitting at the table, stirring with calm a cup of tea while she was reading a gossip magazine.

"'Mornin', sleepyhead" she said without looking at her "You almost missed the alarm clock today…"

She was surprised at her mother's calmness (her most normal reaction when something awful happened during her travelling was to shout them out loud), but she didn't say a thing; there'll be plenty of time to explain things later. She looked around, yawning and scratching her left arm. There was no sign of the Doctor.

"Where's he?"

"Who, sweetie?" her mother asked, still not looking at her, spreading a slice of toast with butter. A bit of intense-blonde hair fell over her face and she moved it away, absently.

"The Doctor, mum... Is he in the TARDIS?"

"Doctor? Doctor who?"

Rose looked at her, sceptical, a sarcastic smile on her face. Her mother had never get on well with him (maybe because it was his fault that she spent days, weeks, even months without seeing her own daughter) but she has never needed to fake she didn't know him: her style was more into give him a painful slap in his arm when he dared to show up.

Jackie Tyler sip a bit of tea, the cup between both hands.

"'Urry up or you'll be late to work, honey"

Rose gave a snort that she intended to be laughter.

"Job! What job?"

Jackie Tyler rolled her eyes.

"What a clever conversation to have this early in the mo'ning…"

"Mum" she shook her head; that was insane "Don't you remember? The building where I work, it was blown up…" she ended sarcastically.

Jackie finally dared to look away from the slice of toast. Her intense-blue eyes widened.

"What?" she exclaimed, standing up "When happened that? Oh, my God, how it happened, where…?!"

"What do you mean, where? Don't you remember? You wanted to ask for insurance due to psychological damage…" Rose gasped; a cold, piercing anguish was making its way to her stomach "Mum, you're scaring me. Stop it, it's not funny…"

The look in her mother's face gave her an answer with no words: she wasn't faking anything, neither joking.

"Ok― I know!" Rose said suddenly, pointing at her with a finger; she let escape a nervous laughter "This must be… a paradox, that's it… Something's gone wrong with the TARDIS… Wait, wait!... I was out for a whole year… last year, the year that never happened, to me I mean… Which year are we in? What's the date?"

Her mother was looking at her how if she suddenly had grown a third eye.

"That's why you were asking for a doctor…" she said, touching her forehead with a worried expression on her face. Rose got rid of her.

"I'm ok, mum, I don't have a temperature… I just think… I'm going crazy, or something worse… I… We were in the TARDIS, we were laughing remembering the Emperor… And suddenly it was that light… I have to ask him what happened. Where is he? Doctor? Doctor!" she called, wishing with all her energy she would hear his comforting voice bursting out in laughter.

When she headed to the living room, her head reflected for an instant in a small mirror in the wall. Rose felt the world ripped apart under her feet.

Her hair.

Her hair was long again.

Rose screamed, moving back until she stumbled and fell to the floor.

"Rose! Are you ok?"

The girl stayed in the floor, gasping for breath, with the horror reflected in her face, touching her hair with trembling hands. Touching a hairstyle she hadn't used for months. Jackie ducked at her side, her disconcerted look turned into true restlessness.

"Rose, my child… what's wrong?"

She moved away abruptly, holding back another scream. She looked at her mother like if she didn't know her.

"I've got to find him…"

She stood up, fighting to stay on her feet. She didn't care she was still in her pajamas, or maybe she didn't realize that fact. She run down the stairs frantically, even jumped accidentally some steps; she nearly fell off several times, but she didn't stop until she reached the street. Alone in the middle of the courtyard, out of breath, she looked around, hoping to see something very familiar too her, something bright blue, phone-box shaped.

But there was no sign of the TARDIS, neither of the Doctor.

That was impossible. Absolutely impossible. He could travel in time, but not in that way… the Doctor could avoid some things happening in a given moment, make them to happen in another way, but he couldn't _change_ reality for everyone except for her… Or could he?

Her thoughts were interrupted by her mother's voice.

"¿Rose?"

She closed her eyes. Her head was starting to ache terribly. She felt her mother put a hand on her shoulder; the girl startled, but she didn't move.

"Honey… why don't you call, and say you're ill, and you don't go to work today?"

Rose simply nodded, her mind miles ago from there. The words he had said in the TARDIS before everything disappeared…

_Rose, whatever happens, don't forget about me._

The Doctor had left her. He had gone, gone forever. And he had been not only erased from her life, but apparently from the whole existence too.


	3. 2

**-2-**

**  
**  
If it all had been a dream, then it had been the most real one she had had in her twenty years of life. Or nineteen, if she hadn't missed a whole year after all, had she? She was not sure. She didn't even know in what year she was living now.

Already dressed in her daily clothing, Rose sipped reluctantly her mug of tea, hot and aromatic, made by her mother. Her mother arranged everything with tea, and in one occasion it even had awakened the Doctor from a strange self-induced coma when his regeneration had gone wrong ...

Rose closed her eyes to choke back the tears. Thinking about it made her feel a great pain inside.

Things weren't looking good. When she dressed up, she hadgo through all her clothes searching for the TARDIS key that the Doctor had given her, so long ago, but she didn't find it. Had she lost it? Had he taken it from her, for some reason?

_Don't forget me ... Whatever it happens, don't forget me, Rose._

What did those words mean? What was he trying to say? How could she forget him?

She looked up just when Mickey came into the room. Mickey, his best friend, who in another time (which now seemed so far away) she had thought to be something more than a friend; Mickey had returned from the parallel universe ... no ... Of course, how stupid ... None of this had happened yet... If it _really had happened_. She refused to believe it; she refused to settle that thought in his mind.

"Rose, are you okay? Jackie told me you were ill"

Rose didn't even react when he kissed her, before sitting down besides her, surrounding her by the shoulders with one arm. Of course, at that time they were still together...

"I'm fine. Really. I've only ..."

Gone crazy? she thought.

**"... **get out of bed on the wrong side**"**

Said like that, it even sounded funny.

"She's had a very strange dream" it was the voice of her mother, who had suddenly appeared in the room with the wireless phone in one hand.

Mickey looked at her with a frown of disbelief.

"Jackie ... a dream isn't a disease ..."

"It was in her case" said the woman, stubbornly, sitting on the couch with them "If you had seen her going down the stairs in her pajamas asking for a doctor, you would've thought the same"

"A doctor? She was asking for a doctor? "Mickey turned to Rose, half laughing "why were you asking for a doctor?

Rose began to feel uncomfortable; she hated when people talked about her as if she weren't there.

"Well, okay, I remind you two that I'm still here…"

The phone that her mother was holding rang at that very moment. Saved by the bell.

"Claire? Yes, I phoned you, but you didn't answer "she said, walking through the hall, her voice less clear as she left the room" Yeah, well, she just repeats she's had a strange dream, something about a doctor... It reminded me when you told me about your neighbor, when he got up and sleepwalked ..."

Rose rolled her eyes. To how many people had her mother told her daughter was probably losing her mind?

Mickey smiled, amused, and she smiled back absently.

Suddenly, whether it was the effect of tea or not, an encouraging idea crossed her mind. It could work ... If she did again what she did the day she met the Doctor, maybe the universe went back to normal, or something like that. She had nothing to lose, hadn't she?

She pulled her nearly empty mug aside.

"Mickey, I need you to take me somewhere"

"Rose, when are you going to explain what the hell are you doing?"

"I'll explain later, I promise".

Before leaving the car, she kissed her quickly… on the cheek . Mickey looked puzzled. She did not notice it, as she was already almost on the doorstep.

The door was opened by a chubby man with a friendly face. It was him. Luckily it was him who had opened the door; it would have been difficult to explain to his wife or his son that she was looking for someone from another planet known as the Doctor and who suddenly didn't exist for anyone except for her.

"Clive? Hello ..."

"Yes? Who are you?"

Rose put her hands in her pockets and forced a smile, feeling suddenly ridiculous; she realized she had been holding some hope that he would recognize her.

"My name is Rose"

He just looked at her up and down, as if expecting to find something familiar in her. His surprised, puzzled expression made it clear he had not succeeded.

"How do you know my name, Rose?"

"You ... you ... once asked for help in the Internet. About The Doctor. We exchanged emails talking about him, and you told me to come here. You showed me photos. The Titanic, remember? The fact is that the Doctor changed my life completely, he made me very happy ... but now ... Everything is going wrong. He has disappeared. The Doctor is gone.

"What is this, a candid camera or something?" said the man, looking around as if seeking for someone hidden into the shrubs, or waiting for the host to pop up with a microphone, laughing out loud.

"No, no, this is real, Clive ... Or so I thought until this morning ..."

"Look, Miss Rose, I think you're mistaken, I don't know anything about any Doctor..."

She looked at him, trying to look sympathetic.

"I'm sure you're lying to me because you've got to ... Of course, I'm sure people think you're mad, or something, when you tell them about a seemingly immortal man who suddenly appears in the most important historical events of mankind. Listen, trust me ... You can tell me, I have traveled with him!

A voice came to them from inside the house.

"Clive, honey? Who is it?"

It was his wife. She also knew about the Doctor. Rose was tempted to call her by her name and ask if she remembered anything, but Clive's eyes made her think better.

"Look, Miss, I have no time for these things"

And he closed the door.

Rose stood there for a moment, motionless, until she realized that there was nothing she could do and decided to leave before the police appeared.

Then, among a dizzying whirl of thoughts, it occurred otherwise. The store. She had to go there, something told her that it was the key. She ran towards the car; Mickey had came out and stood in the road waiting, filled with impatience. He didn't have the time to question her about that strange visit.

"Of course, how could I've been so stupid?!" she exclaimed "First I gotta go to the basement, I have to take the lottery money to Wilson, and the dummies have to attack me..."

And if it worked, what Doctor would appear in the basement littered with dummies? A middle-aged man with a faded, old leather jacket and blue, sharp eyes which seemed to look through her, or a sweet young man, with a wide smile and lively brown eyes? Would he hold her hand and tell her once more to run?

Mickey looked stunned as the girl walked triumphantly from one side to another on the sidewalk, waving her hands.

"It's going to happen tonight, I'm sure there had been a small mismatch in time when the Doctor put me safe, and therefore, it has not happened yet, well, it still don't have to happen ..." she stopped talking, her hands outstretched in front of her "The store, the store has to operate!" she let out a laugh of triumph, hopping, taking Mickey's hands "Of course, that's it! If the store is blown up, the Doctor will show up!"

His expression made clear that Mickey was starting to feel really scared.

"Rose, you don't know what you're talking about ..."

She stopped dead.

"You are right, I can't do that ... Maybe I'll meet myself ... and then the universe would collapse... or something worse, those strange creatures could show up again, those… flying time monkeys ... I had enough of them for once" She shivered.

She thought a moment to think of those creatures had remembered something about the time it took to stop everything make sense. The time was not linear, the Doctor had explained more than once. What would get by having the building where she worked flew into a thousand pieces, if that man, in theory, already knew the Doctor for a long time and yet now he had not heard of him?

It was as if the Doctor had never existed ...

Mickey's voice roused her from her thoughts.

"Rose ... Come on, let's go. I'll better take you home before you blow up something into pieces"

He put his arms around her. Rose stood very still, the euphoria she had felt inside her had died down suddenly, disappeared, and it was again giving way to panic, resignation. Never. She wouldn't allow it.

She got rid of the arms of the startled boy (and still her boyfriend) and turned her back on him, as if trying to escape somewhere, but to where?

"I gotta find him, Mickey ..." her voice choked "Maybe he needs me..."

And I need him, she thought. She raised her hands to cover her face.

She needed to be calm. Despair wasn't going to lead her anywhere.

Rose breathed deeply.

She noticed that Mickey had come behind her, his voice somewhere between surprise and disbelief.

"Rose ... what are you talking about? " he snorted "Is it a joke? I think I was the joker man, why are you trying to compete with me, huh?"

She gave him a gentle tap on the arm and giggled, fortunately getting back her tears. It was typical of Mickey, to downplay things. He smiled back.

Now that she was more calm and thinking clearly, the best she could do was to play along: if they thought she had dreamed it all, let them believe that. Surely the Doctor will arrange everything soon. He wouldn't leave her, right? Not like that. If only she knew where he was ... He could be in serious danger and she couldn't help because she was there, stacked in the dull routine of her life before they met. And each minute it passed it was becoming increasingly clear that he couldn't help her either.

But with the Doctor ... nothing was impossible. That was another thing she had learned from him.

She forced a smile and took Mickey's hands.

"Okay ... I'm sorry ... I ... I think I dreamed it all, but ... it's just that… it was so real ..."

He smiled tenderly.

"Never mind. Fancy going out for some drinks and tell me about your dream?"

She nodded. He was going to think she was insane ... but she surely would explode if she not told anyone about the Doctor. And who better than Mickey, who somehow had shared too the life that the Doctor had given her? Who knows? He maybe did remember something.

She wasn't going to surrender. If she had learned something valuable from the Doctor, it was that she had to keep going. Always.

The two came back to the car, he putting his arm around her shoulders.


End file.
